TWO HUNDRED TWO: Shoes
202
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“That woman’s a slicer. I want something sliced!”
Natalie was looking down the pedestrian-only street toward a woman with long, silky gray hair. The color of it matched the skirt the woman wore, as well as the mesmerizing droplets that flowed down the backs of her fingers. A young man had just dumped a mound of what looked like oversized ginger roots onto the folding table in front of her, and she was making patting gestures over and around the pile.
“That doesn’t look like a spell impression,” Alden said, hurrying after Natalie, just as eager as she was to get a closer view of the magic.
He’d parked the nonagon against the wall of a building half an hour ago. Their destination was near enough that they could have been there in minutes, but the Free Spell Saturday event was so much fun that they weren’t rushing. The Avowed offering free magical services were wearing System name tags that said so. Some of them had booths or were carrying equipment with them that made them more obvious in the crowd. Others were casually browsing shops or sitting outside cafés.
Natalie hadn’t activated her own name tag, but she had a barter thing going on. She’d brought homemade sweets in her purse to offer people as thanks for their talents. Alden wished he’d known in advance that this event was taking place so that he could have thought of something similar. He couldn’t even figure out how to describe his skill on his name tag to explain how he might be useful or amusing to others.
They reached the woman with the folding table and stood behind a taped line on the pavement that indicated her space requirements. She had already finished with the roots. They were black inside, and she’d cut them into tiny cubes. A pungent smell filled the air. The man who’d brought them was scraping them into a large, dark green box shaped like a Chinese takeout container.
He tapped one of its corners and said a word that meant “seal” in Artonan. When nothing happened, he repeated it, pronouncing the word slightly differently.